The Catering Trailers Business – Is it for you?
Mobile Catering Trailers can be a great business for SOME people.
But certainly not everyone!
Here are some things to think about BEFORE you discover them the hardway.
1/ Mobile catering can have very antisocial hours.
Catering trailers is a catchall term for a variety of different types of business. So the hours depend on the type of the business.
Road side caterers for example, are catering to commercial travellers and lorry drivers. That means getting up early, and being on location before most leave home for work. Event caterers or park concession caterers are obliged to work at weekends, which is when the main trade is.
So consider when you have to work before making up your mind.
2/ A Catering Trailer is a people business – So Do you like people?
Catering Trailers are about people, not just food. Customers will come back if they see you as a pleasant person, nothing puts customers off more than rude or offhand behaviour.
You will do best with a smile – can you smile at the end of a long weekend when it is raining?
3/ You are the boss. And that can be a two edged sword.
The fact is you will work for you. And many employees find it unnerving to have no support structure at all. In fact many find the existence of running a small business very lonely.
4/ Drive and determination.
A mobile catering trailer business will go through bad patches – no doubt about it. Only the determined can succeed in any small business.
If you don’t have that drive and want to coast, then you are better off as an employee.
5/ Mobile catering may not be as flexible as you may think. die
Take market trading for example . Don’t expect to disappear for a week on holiday, and expect to find your pitch still there! There is a queue of potential traders wanting to join every market.
Take roadside catering. The day the best locations are vacated, you can be sure that someone will show interest.
How will you cope with illness and holidays. Failing to plan for events like this, is planning to fail!
6/ Mobile Catering is Attention to detail
You have to have attention to detail: to be a stickler for cleanliness, and all of that is about good organisation. A lot of graft and repetition.
Fail to do this, and you could easily fail a safety inspection. Be warned! – and even without that, customers like clean and tidy, particularly if they are trusting you to serve them food.
So think it all through.
Even if you are willing to put up with the downside, ask your family too. If your family are not bought into the idea, then that can be one more problem than your new business can survive!